Growing up in Nazi Germany, Susan Warsinger felt the effects of antisemitism in her everyday life

Growing up in Nazi Germany, Susan Warsinger felt the effects of antisemitism in her everyday life.

"I was there when they boycotted my father’s store. I was there when we were not allowed to walk through parks without being accosted. I was there when we were not allowed to go to public schools. I was there during Kristallnacht when our neighbors broke down our glass front door," remembers Susan.

While many of the details of her childhood are painful to remember today, Susan still recalls one memory with “tenderness.”

Four-year-old Susan and her father were walking through a park where they lived in Bad Kreuznach, Germany. “There was an ice cream cart nearby,” Susan remembers. “A middle-aged lady from behind beckoned to me to come closer.”

As Susan walked up to the cart, the woman smiled and offered her some ice cream. Though she was young, Susan knew that this was risky. “I felt a pulse in my throat and understood that this lady made a choice to sell her ice cream to a Jewish family,” Susan recalls.

“I should be distraught about remembering how the Nazis slowly and gradually began their terror of the Jewish population.” Instead, Susan thinks of “this lady who chose not to follow antisemitic laws and to do what she thought was right.”

Susan and her immediate family survived the Holocaust. She immigrated to the United States in 1941 and now volunteers for our Museum.

Photo: USHMM, courtesy of Susan Warsinger

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